


Permanency

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-28
Updated: 2012-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-30 06:00:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/328531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes tattoos you get while you're drunk aren't a mistake, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Permanency

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littlecloud (halfeatenmoon)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfeatenmoon/gifts).



> HIMYM characters do not belong to me and I am making no profit off this work of fan fiction.
> 
> Unbetaed because I forgot who said they'd beta HIMYM stories for me; concrit always welcome in comments.
> 
> * * *

Ted wakes up with a thunderous headache and a burning, tingling sensation on his right hip. He feels as though he ought to have no idea what happened last night – isn’t that the way these things usually work? – but he’s in his own bed, and the arm draped over his waist and the faded scent of familiar cologne only remind him of what he already knows.

“Hey, dude. You awake?”

Ted winces. “Jeez, Barney. Your breath stinks.”

“And good morning to you too, sunshine. You’re the one who said we should get a little alcoholic anesthesia happening before we got inked up.”

“Yeah, that was the second stupidest idea of my life.”

“I’m curious now.” Barney’s hand tightens on Ted’s waist and rolls him over – the pressure on the tattoo when he lands on it is actually rather pleasant, like scratching an itch. Scratching is strictly verboten when it comes to tattoo healing, but maybe a little surreptitious rubbing against the sheets is okay. “What was the stupidest idea?”

“Letting you talk me into the tattoo in the first place.”

Barney groans and kisses the tip of Ted’s nose, and then the corner of his mouth. “You’re regretting this. I knew you would.”

Ted nudges his head in against Barney’s neck and kisses him under the chin; Barney tilts his head up like a cat getting skritched, so Ted does it again. “I’m not regretting _anything_ ,” he mumbles into the fine scratch of Barney’s stubble against his lips. His hand moves up onto Barney’s shoulder to pull him closer and Barney flinches.

“Still sore, huh?”

“A little,” Barney says, and Ted can’t help but smile, knowing that he’s the only one to whom Barney would admit such a thing. The smile fades, though, when he thinks about Barney going back home, getting tangled in his own sheets with someone else, casually dismissing the carefully drawn and lettered heart as a silly drunken dare. Someone else being a woman, naturally.

Barney notices the change in Ted’s expression – of course he does – and looks worried. Ted would never ever tell him that the way his forehead wrinkles makes him look like a fretful shar-pei.

“Bro?”

“It’s nothing.”

“That’s not a nothing face.”

Ted touches Barney’s shoulder again with a little more force. “I’m wondering how long this is going to last.”

“I’m pretty sure that tattoos traditionally last forever. Could you maybe not do that with your thumb? Ow.”

Ted eases up. A little. “I didn’t mean the tattoo.”

Barney doesn’t say anything at first but just pulls Ted close. Ted lets his head tuck in against the curve of Barney’s neck and doesn’t resist when Barney’s fingertip traces the outline of the ink on his hip. It hurts all over again, the same hot pain he remembers from the night before, but he can live with that heart-shaped sting. It’s his actual heart he can’t stand to think about getting hurt.

“You’re overthinking this,” Barney says, and his voice is deep and sure and smooth and nothing like a fretful shar-pei.

“Maybe you’re underthinking it,” Ted counters.

Barney kisses him. It’s sloppy but scorching and Ted sort of melts into him and forgets all about being worried about their future together. It’s easy, when Barney flicks his tongue like _that_ and curves his hand around Ted’s backside like _that_ and pulls the two of them together. The bed’s already sleep-warmed, but rapidly heats up further. Ted stops minding about Barney’s Scotch-breath and the way that his skin feels hot and tight where it’s been inked, and dissolves into sensation and desire.

“It’ll last,” Barney says into his mouth, licking the corner of his lips in the way that makes Ted’s brain fizzle and spark. “It’ll last.”

“God, Barney—” Ted hooks his leg over Barney’s and there isn’t any way they can possibly get closer until Barney wriggles his free hand in between their bodies and Ted inadvertently bites Barney’s earlobe a little too hard when Barney gets that hand around their cocks and starts stroking. He feels as though Barney can play him like a musical instrument. Possibly something in the woodwind family, given the fingering – oh _God_.

Well, at least he knows Barney’s never done _that_ to a woman before. That move’s his, and his alone.

And he knows that even if _this_ doesn’t last, this heat-sweat-slick-fingers-hot-cock-naked-cuddles-warm-nights-long-kisses _this_ , even if one of them decides that _this_ can’t be _them_ any more, then _they_ , nonetheless, will last. He’s got proof under his skin and in the words Barney whispers into his ear that will remain imprinted in his long-term memory, words he doubts that Barney has ever spoken with the sincerity he puts behind them with Ted.

* * *

Robin walks in on them about half an hour later and gets entirely the wrong impression, which is perhaps fortunate for her. She grabs her phone and snaps a couple of shots of the two of them to send to Marshall and Lily and then save as blackmail material.

In the photos, Ted and Barney are curled in bed together, sheets demurely covering their most private parts; perhaps if they hadn’t been Robin would have gotten the right impression after all. They’re lying forehead to forehead, nose to nose, arms curled over each other’s waists, breathing synchronized in sleep. On each of them a tattoo stands out in red; Barney’s is on his right shoulder, Ted’s, his right hip. Robin gets a close-up shot of these and the stupid faux camera shutter noise her phone makes is what wakes the guys up.

While she’s barricaded in the bathroom with the guys banging on the door, swearing to God that she’ll delete the photos (even as she sends them as fast as possible to Lily), she gets a moment to examine the tattoos and smile. The guys are overreacting; these are obviously just mementoes of a drunken night out, and there’s no harm in showing Marshall and Lily.

The tattoos are a matched pair; they are classic red lovehearts, each crossed with an elegant scroll that simply reads, “BRO”.


End file.
